1. Field
Example embodiments relate to servers, display devices and methods of generating heatmaps, and more particularly to semantic systems determining scrolling characteristics based on content annotation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile reading devices for reading electronic documents, such as e-books, are widespread, and are becoming ever more widespread with the integration of electronic readers (e-readers) into general purpose electronic devices. For example, mobile phones have begun to include integrated reading applications.
Similarly to web surfing, electronic reading (e-reading) is not uniquely a leisurely activity; it is sometimes necessary to search for a particular part of a document, or to scan through a document with a particular reading goal. Examples of documents requiring such reading activities include (but are not limited to) legal documents or study books.
Many solutions exist today for manipulating and browsing through electronic documents. For example, most reading devices provide a common text search in which a user can input a number of characters in a particular order (a character string) and the search function brings the user to portions of a document including the character string. Variations of simple text searches exist, including searches that highlight every instance of a character string in a document.
As another example, electronic devices are often connected to input devices that facilitate document navigation. These electronic devices may include, for example, mouse buttons used to select an object and mouse wheels used to scroll through documents.
Recently, touch sensitive surfaces (e.g., touch screens) have become available. Touch-sensitive surfaces bring new capabilities for interacting with documents as well as some limitations. For example, tabletops and smartphones including touch screens usually have no equivalent of mouse buttons and a mouse wheel. These limitations are overcome through new interaction techniques.
For instance, some solutions focus on associating new interactions to document behavior: tilt, acceleration, thumb pressure and the like are associated to scrolling, opening or closing. For example, pressure may serve as an alternative to multi-tap for text entry with different pressure levels for different letters on a key, and for a virtual keyboard, where pressure allows an uppercase switch. Further, pressure may facilitate one-handed continuous scrolling. When a pressure threshold is exceeded in a part of a touch screen, the contents start to scroll upwards or downwards, with the direction being adjustable via tiny thumb gestures.
Other interaction techniques include swipe, flick or pinch gestures that substitute for conventional user interactions. For example, flick gestures are generally proposed for scrolling through a document being displayed on a touch sensitive surface. Common implementations of flicking involve kinetic scrolling: once a graphical object, for instance a list, has been metaphorically thrown by the user, the system simulates inertia (the object continues to move) as well as friction (the speed progressively decreases down to rest). The deceleration is automatically controlled by the system.
Flick-and-Brake scrolling is a variation of kinetic scrolling that lets the user control this deceleration by pressing a finger on the screen: the stronger the pressure, the stronger the deceleration, analogous to real world physics. Different types of flick-and-brake scrolling have been proposed.
With the advent of electronic documents, other types of user activities not related to document manipulation have also evolved. In the past, when reading a conventional paper document, some readers would annotate passages of the document. An annotation is a note that is made while reading any form of text. For example, highlights, bookmarks, corrections, notes, drawings, underlining, and brief comments are all types of annotations.
Modern analogues to paper annotations include electronic annotations, tags and the like. Electronic annotations are often, but not always, user generated content. For example, social networks of readers may annotate electronic documents and the annotations may be centrally stored on a server. Each member of the social network may access the content generated by other members of the social network. Non-user generated content may include annotations produced by, for example, e-book publishers.
Many methods of manipulating and browsing documents, and making available user generated content, are used in the conventional art. These methods involve user interactions and goals that do not correspond to a particular context (location, activity) or a particular content. For example, while a user can search for a character string, a user cannot search for a literary technique. An example of an unsearchable literary technique is irony. Irony may refer to the use of words to express something other than and sometimes the opposite of the literal meaning, or incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result. Irony is not conventionally searchable because it is context dependent and requires subject matter analysis to detect.